Get Blank (Fill in the Blank) (35 page)

“...for really good reasons you’d find out if you just talked to them for a second!”

“Lord, if you can manifest whenever you choose...”

“You dare question Satan? I am here now!” Nguyen was trying not to cower. I was getting really good at this. “So, remember, lot on my plate lately, but could you remind me who the prophet is?”

“You don’t know?” Nguyen asked.

“We do not deal in names! I know him as Swirly Plaid Aura Man! It is likely he has a different, more human name for use with trifling mortals!”

“Of course, Lord. We know him as Jonah Bailey.”

“Wait, what?” Surprise made the question come in my normal voice.

“Lord?”

“Did you say Jonah Bailey?” I boomed.

“Yes, Lord.”

Jonah Bailey was the name I used with V.E.N.U.S. I had never used it to start a Satanist cult. Never once, no matter how many times I had been tempted.

“Where is Jonah Bailey now?”

“He’s making sure that traitor Sam Smiley gets what’s coming to him.”

Sam Smiley, the name the First Reformed Church of the Antichrist thought was mine. Now there was an eerie feeling: one of my aliases was trying to kill another one of my aliases. I did a quick mental calculation and determined there was absolutely no way I set all this in motion. No, this time Mr. Blank was real and he was out there trying to fuck me over.

“And how is Jonah Bailey going to do that?”

“He’s getting...”

The opening chords of Boston’s “Peace of Mind” rang out through the theater. First Nguyen, then everyone else in the theater was looking around in confusion. Only Rand was not. “The music! The infernal music!” he blubbered.

“Hold that thought,” I said, snaking one arm out of Mothman’s wing and fishing the phone from my pocket.

“Bob? It’s Dan Onanian.” Mina’s lawyer.

“Not really a good time, Dan. Can I call you back?”

“Uh, sure, but this is...”

“Thanks.” I ended the call. “All right, where were we?”

“It’s just a costume! He’s an impostor!” Nguyen screamed with the righteous hatred only the truly religious can muster.

“Blank! Hold still!” Brady’s voice, from across the theater.

I obeyed, and was rewarded with gunshots popping from the back. Nguyen fell, a hole blooming in his shoulder. The other Satanists dove for cover. I unzipped the Mothman suit and threw the head at Rand, who screamed in terror.

“Satan has no head!”

I hopped out of the costume and ran for the side door. A moment later, Brady pounded down the aisle. The Satanists were beginning to get up, but Brady waved the pistol at them. “Stay down!”

From the stage, cradling his bloody shoulder, Nguyen pointed at us. “Get them! Any who fall will have rewards in Hell!”

Some of the Satanists charged immediately. Others, the ones who weren’t a hundred percent into this whole “worshiping the devil” thing, were a little slower. But soon there was a room full of pissed-off religious fanatics coming at us, and though I wasn’t sure how many bullets Brady had in that gun, there weren’t enough. She came to the same conclusion after shooting a couple, following me to the door while the great mass surged after us. Brady and I burst out into the alley, with her white Porsche waiting at the mouth, nose out to the street.

The door popped open for a second, a sea of enraged faces on the other side. All of a sudden I was in a zombie movie, and me without a Louisville Slugger. Pushing my back against the door, bracing vainly against the tide of lunatics, I knew we had no shot to get to the car. I was going to get torn apart by Satanists.

“Brady! Help me hold this thing closed!”

“Hold on,” she said, running to the Dumpster.

“What are you doing? That’s way too—”

I was going to say “heavy,” especially for someone who considered ninety pounds to be obese. I had forgotten that weird Ana monk strength of Brady’s. She put her back into it, and with a deafening scrape like a giant running his fingernails over a blackboard, the Dumpster inched toward the door.

The door popped open, and for a heart-stopping second my feet were off the ground. I think it surprised the angry mob of true believers behind me, because they faltered, and when my feet hit asphalt, I leaned back and the door slammed into their howling faces.

The Dumpster, throwing out metallic grunts like an over-the-hill robot getting up from a recliner, inched over the doorframe. I stepped away. The door slammed open again, only to smack into the metal hide of the Dumpster. A deep clang echoed down the narrow alleyway, while the hands of pursuing Satanists, turned to claws by religious fervor, reached through the barely open door.

I kicked the Dumpster as a “fuck you” and got my karmic just desserts in the form of a stubbed toe. “Goddamnit!”

“Well, then,” Brady said, dusting her hands off.

We hopped, me quite literally, into her car and she gunned it onto Hillhurst before the cultists realized there was another exit.

“So you got nothing from them,” she said.

“Nothing worth mentioning.”

“I’m beginning to think you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Only beginning? Listen, could you take me to Griffith Park before you throw me out of the car?”

She grunted what I took to be assent. I took my phone out and called Dan back.

“Dan Onanian, attorney at law.”

“Dan, it’s Bob.”

“Bob! Hey, where were you just now? It sounded like you were in a tunnel.”

“Giant monster costume. What’s going on?”

He paused for a second, but decided to press on. “I was calling about your girlfriend’s case. Something weird happened. All the charges were dropped. Apparently someone else confessed to the crime, produced evidence, knew the kind of things only the cops and the killer knew. The whole nine yards.”

“They released her? Is she with you?”

“No, her cousin picked her up. Bob... she didn’t mention any family in the city when I talked to her. This stinks.”

“You’re right about that. Let me ask you something. The killer, he have a shaved head and goatee?”

“Yeah. How’d you know that?”

“Lucky guess. Dan, you’re off the hook. Thanks for the help, and if I need you, I’ll call.”

“No problem. We have to stick together against the Reptilians, right?”

“Oh yeah. Rule number one.”

I hung up and turned to Brady.

“I’ve got good news for you. You’re going to get that payback for the assassination attempt.”

“You’ve said that before.”

“Just trust me.”

“You’ve said that, too.”

“I need you to contact Vassily the Whale.”

“Zhukovsky is dead.”

“Is he?”

I EXPLAINED THE SITUATION TO BRADY
. She was dubious, but listened anyway. I told her to set the meeting at Leo Carrillo Beach and she agreed. It was a hell of a situation I had found myself in. I couldn’t trust my only ally, not really, and her powerbase had all but entirely eroded. She had lost her connection to Quackenbush Security, and the Anas would be dealing with the fallout of the attack on their temple. She was still a dangerous woman, especially in close quarters, who had once attempted to kill both me and Mina. A blast of paranoia shook me. Maybe she had been lying and really was behind the whole thing.

No. I’d put the pieces together again and they’d fit. In retrospect, it had been right in front of me the whole time, from the minute I looked at the crime scene photos. Something had been off, and now I knew what that was. I had thought the city was out to get me. I was partly right.

Brady dropped me off in the same parking lot I had been arrested in the night before, then spun her car in a redlined three-point turn and floored it like she had seen
Evil Dead
too many times and had developed a tree phobia. I went to the little dirt divider where the three pine trees grew. Beyond was a screen of greenery, and beyond that would be the driving range.

I approached the right tree and stood on my tiptoes, hunting around for the car keys I’d stashed there. I was hoping no one had spotted them, or even worse, some curious bird was now using them to line a nest in the vast wilderness of Griffith Park. There was nothing there. Panicking, I boosted myself up for a better look. Still nothing, except a line of ants marching down a branch. I cursed. I should have asked Brady to stick around until I had the keys in hand, or at least had another way to contact her. Had I just stranded myself in Griffith Park? And would I be a big enough asshole to get Lara stuck deeper in this thing?

I jumped down, still swearing, when something glinted at the corner of my eye. Oh. Wrong tree.

I grabbed the key with the green rabbit’s foot and set off toward VC’s car. The golf course was eerie after the previous day. It was Friday, and the rolling lawn was free of any golfers. There was no sign of the shootout that had happened either. I wish that kind of thing surprised me anymore, but it didn’t. There were too many groups with a vested interest in keeping things quiet. Unless whoever controlled the cops these days had a specific mad-on for the cabals involved, there would likely only be the odd mention in News of the Weird or a story buried in the back of the
Times
saying nothing of import.

I reached the place where I was pretty sure VC had died. There was no sign. No suit, no goo, no bullet. It was as if he never existed, and according to most sources, he had not. The clearing, between several pine trees, had slightly fewer pine needles on the ground considering the wind that had been blowing all week. That was all I’d find. Rest in peace, Victor Charlie. You were memorable. I felt a little silly getting maudlin over a brainwashed mutant, but he had helped me out. I hoped I could at least bring the people responsible down.

I passed the place where Brady’s companion had fallen. No outline, no blood. She was gone as well. If there was a story about her, it would probably be called something like, “FASHION MODEL DEAD OF LEAD POISONING” and the text would detail something that couldn’t possibly be true. A young woman, found her in her apartment, shot. The police would call it a suicide, but the pistol in her apartment had never been fired and the bullet dug out of her was a large caliber only suitable for assault rifles. It was amazing how many murders got covered up as suicides, and yet the people in charge still left these colossal plot holes. There it was again, so obvious now that I stopped to think about it.

VC’s Caddy was waiting right where we left it. The key crunched in the lock and I opened up the heavy door. The Genesis Flail was on the back seat, sitting in the harmonic converter. The engine turned over with a barbaric rumble. I hoped to borrow a little of that confidence for the evening.

My first stop was to my ID guy for a new set of papers. Javier regarded me impassively, his scalp shining between the stubborn strands of hair glued to the other side of his head, and quoted a price. While he worked up the documents, I ran a few errands getting the rest of what I needed: a couple stage lights, some cellophane, batteries, and a remote control. I picked up the ID a couple hours later and drove out to the meeting site.

Leo Carrillo State Beach is one of the more beautiful beaches on a stretch of coastline known for beautiful beaches. Bordered on the landward side by the rolling avocado-colored cliffs of Malibu, the beach seemed secluded even though the two-lane Pacific Coast Highway ran right by it. The beach was distinctive for the large lava rock formations rising from the sand like a craggy prehistoric creature emerging from the deep to mess up Tokyo. It’s most famous for guest-starring in movies, and there might have been a tiny part of my id that picked this for its appearance in
The Usual Suspects
when the guys bury Benicio del Toro. Maybe I hoped Fenster’s ghost would look after me and babble gibberish at the people who would shortly be arriving to kill me.

I pulled into the parking lot across PCH. Only one other car was there, a salt-scarred Range Rover with a surfboard rack on the roof. The guys were probably in the water, catching the last couple waves before the sun went down and the California Current turned the water into liquid nitrogen. The new papers went into my breast pocket and I took the bags of electrical equipment and the Genesis Flail from the car. An underpass led from the lot to the beach itself, the cars passing overhead on PCH surrounding me with an unearthly hum.

The two surfers passed me in the tunnel, their wetsuits peeled to the waist, their skin and hair fried from a day in the sun. We exchanged a nod, and I felt their eyes on me as I emerged from the tunnel. After all, I was dressed like a jazz musician and carrying what looked like grocery bags and a radioactive rock on a chain.

I sat the bags down in the sand and went to the closest of the rock formations. I placed the Flail next to the lava rock, winding the chain around it carefully. I judged that by sunset, the hungry tide would cover it up, and by the time my guests showed up, it should be totally hidden. It wasn’t immediately obvious, even though the colors didn’t match. The natural formations ranged from a sunburnt yellowish to a rich chocolate; the Genesis Stone was a glowing gray, the same color as a full moon in a clear sky. The texture matched almost perfectly, though.

I returned to the bags and assembled the lights. I placed them in pairs on three different rock formations and covered the ends in cellophane. I had to wade out into the surf for one. They would be easy to see in the clear light of day. At night, though, they should be invisible. After all, they were stage lights, designed to be unseen in the dark. I silently thanked Hollis Nguyen for that idea. From the oil-drum trashcan at the mouth of the underpass, a cartoon raccoon shot me Disney eyes, imploring me not to litter. I obeyed, stashing the bags in the trunk of VC’s car. I didn’t need my hand tipped. And last, I keyed the remote. After a few tests, I got the hang of it.

All that was left was the buzzing of nerves in my limbs. A hundred questions flitted through my head, all useless. Would Brady do what I asked her? Would she sell me out to Quackenbush to get back in their good graces? Was Mina still alive? Couldn’t think about that. She was still alive. She was fine. And she’d be home soon.